


In the Blue Shadows of This Tropical Dusk

by Charientist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Beach Vacation, Character Death Fix, Character was Already Suffering, Comes Back Wrong, Death Made it Worse, Epilogue What Epilogue, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Post-Canon, or rather, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-19 04:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19968022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charientist/pseuds/Charientist
Summary: Harry and Sirius take a beach vacation as Sirius struggles with coming back through the veil.





	In the Blue Shadows of This Tropical Dusk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Meatball42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/gifts).



> title from "Forecast" by Marc Frazier

Sirius Black closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh, salty air, tipping his face to the setting sun. It was cooler in these evening hours, not even enough to truly warm his skin, much less the perpetually chilled bones beneath.

At least it was better here than it would have been in England. Here it was close enough to warm he could almost remember what it felt like before frost had settled permanently into the marrow of his bones.

After a lifetime in Azkaban, followed by scant years wallowing in the dark of his decrepit childhood home, followed by –

_Falling forever, pearlescent gray hands pressing against him, pressing against the film of glass cloth that surrounded him, watching the laughing face of his mad cousin looming farther and farther away without ever quite rising out of view. The voices of everyone he’d ever lost pressing against his ears in urgent whispers he could never quite understand._

_Forever muffled, as if even after falling through the veil he was still hearing them through the other side of it._

He tried not to think about his time on the other side. It lurked in the shadows of every waking moment, never quite close enough to remember the details but never far enough to forget.

He breathed in again, focusing on the sound and the smell of the ocean even as he shivered in the persistent chill that came not from the air but from within.

“Sirius?” a low voice called from behind him.

Sirius startled out of his reverie and turned around to find his godson hovering anxiously behind him.

Harry had aged in the time he’d once again been out of Sirius’ reach, and now he couldn’t even be mistaken for James. James had never looked quite as old. Never made it past barely adult. He couldn’t be mistaken for James’ father either, though. The man who’d acted as a surrogate parent for Sirius, so much better than his own had ever been, had been older when Sirius met him than Harry was even now.

Harry had lost the glasses at some point in the last decade, Lily’s brilliant eyes shining out of his face clearer than ever. He had the first hints of grey growing in wings above his ears, far too young for it, especially as a wizard, but it paired with the lines of stress already wearing permanently into his face.

Sirius had missed his godson’s childhood to his own recklessness and need for revenge, had lost his teen years to the repercussions of the same, but he’d lost the beginning of Harry’s adulthood to an attempt to _save_ him, to be there as he should have been all along, and somehow it made that final loss the most bitter of all.

Sirius swallowed through a dry throat and tried on a wan smile, trying to ground himself in the moment. After all his failure, after Harry had devoted his life after Voldemort to finding a way to undo those failures and bring Sirius back...

Sirius couldn’t bear to give him more reason to stress and to worry. “Everything alright, Harry?”

Harry’s shoulders relaxed and the lines around his eyes eased slightly, which let Sirius relax as well in relief. “That’s what I was going to ask you.”

Sirius managed a warmer smile and reached out to ruffle Harry’s mess of hair. At least some things stayed the same. “Just taking in the last of the sun.”

Harry hummed in acknowledgement, his own smile growing at the casual touch. His gaze darted over the fading sunset, before he turned back and gestured toward the beachhouse they’d been staying in for the last week. “Well. Dinner’s ready, but we can eat outside if you want.”

Sirius shrugged. “Sun’s almost down anyway. What’s on the menu?” he asked as he followed Harry inside.

“Indian tonight. Chickpea Curry.”

“Hmm. Foreign again,” Sirius said with absolutely no enthusiasm.

Harry sputtered a disbelieving laugh, warming Sirius in a way the sun had failed to. “Don’t act like you don’t enjoy it,” he said.

Sirius grinned. If there was one thing that could chase away the lingering chill it was too much spice in his food, and if he made a fool of himself in the process, all the better for the way it drew out fond, exasperated laughter.

If the increase in southeast Asian cuisine was anything to go by, Harry had noticed and had no problem abetting him.

“Besides,” Harry continued. “I enjoy cooking foreign food. Feels nothing like cooking for the Dursleys that way. They never did like anything that wasn’t Properly English.”

The warmth vanished, his stomach plummeting like a rock in the dark waters around Azkaban. “You… you know you don’t have to cook, right?”

Harry just smirked. “And suffer _you_ in the kitchen? I’m fine, thanks.”

That started a surprised laugh out of Sirius. “You sound just like–”

_Like a voice last heard murmuring through suffocating gray fabric, gray glass. Like the world of the veil pressed close around him, muffling even the embrace of death._

“Like my mum or my dad, this time?” Harry said, voice wry and dry but still regretful.

 _My fault my fault my fault_ , the familiar voice of old grief hisses in the dark of his mind.

“Er.”

Sirius considered for just a moment. Considered the truth and the shadows in his godson’s eyes and all the years he had missed in one prison or another.

“Like Molly Weasley, actually,” Sirius lied. Although now that he said it, the comparison wasn’t entirely off.

Harry blanched. Whether in surprise or at the reminder of the Weasleys, who he’d apparently grown more distanced from between his work as an Unspeakable and that he’d never quite renewed his relationship with Ginevra, most of his life subsumed by his own search for a way to bring Sirius back.

_Yourfaultyourfaultyourfault_

_You were supposed to protect him, but you left him alone again, again, again._

“The woman never could stand anyone else in the kitchen when she was around.” 

Sirius smiled as Harry choked out another laugh. At least, if he could do nothing else, be nothing else, could never make up for failing to save or raise his godson at any age that mattered, any time when the man had been a boy who _needed_ him. 

At least he was good for a laugh. 


End file.
